Tag Archives: music_education

Trying to get this blog going again, impetus is a co-worker who just got a classroom set of iPod Touches & is starting a blog about the whole experience. Her 3rd graders will eventually be bringing their Pods to my music room. They’ll have GarageBand loaded on there, got lots of ideas about how we’ll use that beautiful little (little? 800 mbs?) piece of software.

So, what’s been happening since I last tried to get this blog going two years ago?

still have a SmtBrd (official Musitechoblog abrv.), but the projector’s getting really dim (& no, it’s not a bulb problem, it’s a 5 yr. old Epson). Will be getting a new projector soon, that’ll have an HDMI connection (more about that next post).

Now have an iPad (2) for classroom use, plus I bought one for myself during the recent state tax-free weekend (a 3, that’s what everybody calls it, no matter how Apple wishes they wouldn’t).

My district has made an almost complete turnaround since two years ago as far as granting teachers and students more freedom to use technology, such as:

restricting teachers to “user” accounts rather than giving them administrative rights on their own teacher computers is a thing of the past

we (teachers) can access YouTube & show ‘Toob vids in the classroom

the district developed a BYOD policy for middle & high school students that seems to be working (better network filtering software helped w/ that)

they’re piloting iPad projects all over the place, incl. in some music classes.

Not sure what happened in the last two years to change their attitude towards these kinds of things, other than inertia, & the fact that maybe the head honchos actually had wanted to move in this direction, just at their own pace. We do have a new superintendent, might be one difference.

And, some things haven’t changed – I still stay up way too late. So, more next time.